This is a strange time of year for me. Relatively quiet diary wise and along the corridor, but work wise I have a lot to do within the couple of weeks before term starts.
This flexibility inevitably means I end up in the lab and doing what I am obsessed with at the moment, making handaxes. However, over the past two days things have not gone so well.
I have been trying to work the big chunks I have had lying round for a long time, but seem to be just destroying stuff, rather than being able to make anything. I think it is because I have so much going on in my head it is difficult for me to slow down and focus.
Anyway, I was pretty pleased with this handaxe preform. It was a large clean flake removal from the bottom right nodule in the cage. So far so good. The hard hammer shaping went well and I moved onto the soft hammer. The thing to note on the above photo is the dark brown inclusion at the bottom near my little finger. This material was a lot harder than the flint it was sat within.
This is a better view of the hard section. Soft hammer wise I do not have so much choice, they are all a pretty similar size, and I could have done with something heavier to take longer flakes from this particular flint, but I did not have that option, so I just had to hit it faster with the aim of increasing the kinetic energy and therefore impact. Above is an example of what I would class as a good platform, both low and isolated, or sticking out a bit. All the ingredients to produce a good clean removal.
However, I hit the platform of hard material, again and again with no result, until this happened. Increasing the impact at one end has split the handaxe preform in the middle. I know this as endshock, although I do not fully understand the phenomena, I just avoid hard hits at one end of a handaxe. With this example I was working with it on my leg, held down at the distal end and hitting hard the proximal. I wonder if my leg acted as a fulcrum and it gave way in the middle? Is this the same as endshock? I don’t know, but I am keeping this as a really interesting example of something or other.
